


Shades of Grey are the Colors I See

by pyrrhical (anoyo)



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: (sort of), Captain America: Civil War (Movie) Spoilers, Fix-It, M/M, Moral Philosophy, Post-Civil War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-06
Updated: 2018-04-06
Packaged: 2019-04-08 05:53:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,306
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14098683
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anoyo/pseuds/pyrrhical
Summary: Tony calls the phone Steve gave him at the end of Civil War and explains how he and Steve never really disagreed at all.(Sort of a fix-it?)





	Shades of Grey are the Colors I See

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Impala_Chick](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Impala_Chick/gifts).



> Happy Age Gap Treat, impala_chick! 
> 
> This is a stand-alone story that is very obviously an alternate version of number 4 in [The Five Calls Steve Might Have Received and the One He Finally Did](https://archiveofourown.org/works/14097846), if you've read the other fic (I'd recommend reading that one first, if you want to read both).
> 
> It's not required to read both fics to enjoy either one. This fic is just what happens when my id takes an idea and runs with it. Apparently this is less frightening than I thought. A huge thank you to [ceruleansky](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ceruleansky) who helped me workshop nice chunks of this and who told me it was a fix-it and not terrifying. (I didn't think of it as a fix-it. Apparently it is.)

The Cape was beautiful, and Steve had taken to sketching the sun across the waves every morning. He would pick up some coffee, ignoring how his metabolism made caffeine as ineffectual as alcohol, and simply enjoying the taste. He hadn’t always liked it -- too acidic, too thick -- but his years in the war had won him over. The men had drunk it every morning, and Steve had joined in, enjoying that small way to fit in.

It was there, looking out over the Cape with a sketch pad, that Steve felt the most at peace. It was calm, the sun rising every morning over the waves. Steve could pretend he was enjoying the vacation he’d vowed to take after the war. 

The last of his coffee had cooled when the phone rang, and Steve put down the pencil he’d been using, sketch half finished.

“Tony?” Steve asked, feeling his body tense.

“That’s me,” Tony answered, voice flip. 

Steve made himself relax, starting at his shoulders. If Tony was being flip, it either wasn’t urgent, or the world was about to end, and tensing would help nothing. “What’s wrong?”

“If that isn’t a loaded question, I don’t know what is,” Tony answered.

“Why did you call me?” Steve asked, letting out a breath.

“Because I felt like it,” Tony answered. Before Steve could respond, still choosing between exasperation and anger, Tony continued, “I know, I know, the phone is for emergencies. Or needing. ‘Need’ is a very non-specific term, Steve. Oh, I know it’s more objective than the word ‘want,’ but it’s still subjective in the end. You’re usually clearer than this, shame on you.”

“Tony,” Steve said, but Tony cut him off again before he could figure out what to say.

“Not that any of this is very clear, mind you, but I know you meant an emergency.” Tony let out a short laugh. “You’re just so noble, always having to do the right thing. Black and white, right and wrong, you have it all figured out. The rest of us mere mortals have to live in shades of grey, where ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ change meaning from day to day, or even moment to moment.”

“Tony,” Steve said, breathing the word heavily into the phone. “Why did you call me?”

“I already told you,” Tony said. “Because I felt like it.”

“That’s not what the phone is for,” Steve said, leaning back into his chair and staring out over the waves. 

“I don’t know,” Tony said, voice mockingly questioning. “If you just wanted me to have a big red ‘push in case of danger’ button, you could have connected this phone to a pager. Or even given an email address. A phone isn’t the most reliable form of communication, what with roaming and rural areas. No, a phone is best used when an immediate answer is necessary. It’s immediate conversation, if it connects.”

“I don’t want to debate technology with you,” Steve said. He picked up his pencil and twirled it around his fingers, the repetitive motion calming the tension Tony seemed intent on building.

“Then you shouldn’t have used technology that invites a debate,” Tony said. “Besides, you can always hang up. There’s no big bad, no great evil, not even a not-so-great evil.”

Steve took a breath. “Get to your point, Tony.”

“My point, Steve -- my point is that a phone is a device for communication. You gave me a phone. I’m communicating.” 

There was no longer any amusement in Tony’s voice. That was rare, and Steve was willing to give it the chance to continue, even if he wasn’t sure there was any point. “Fine,” Steve said. “Communicate. But try to make sense, Tony.”

“I always make sense,” Tony said. “Whether or not someone else understands my sense isn’t really my concern.” He paused. “But fine. I’ll try this in words you’ll understand. Black and white. You’re right, and I’m wrong. Making sense so far?”

“Tony,” Steve snapped.

“Fine, fine, sorry, whatever. You’re right, and I’m wrong. Everything has a right and a wrong. If someone thinks something’s right that’s actually wrong, they just need to change their understanding, right? Because right and wrong are objective. There is no middle ground.”

“Tony, I understand shades of grey. There are a lot of things that aren’t just right or wrong,” Steve said. He switched to twirling the pencil with his other hand.

“Oh, good, that’ll make this easier. But you said ‘a lot of things,’ not ‘all things.’ That means that there are some things that are just black and white -- that have obvious, static right and wrong answers.” Tony’s voice had taken on a sort of lecturing quality, like it did when he was trying to explain some piece of tech, or culture, or colloquialism, in a way that Steve would understand.

“Yes,” Steve said. “Some things do.”

“That’s what makes you so noble,” Tony said. “You have convictions, and you stick to them. Me? I’m not so noble. I try to do the right thing, the good thing, the ‘what would Steve do?’ thing. The problem is that I just don’t see those static right and wrong things. No, I have to analyze them. Look at them from every perspective, turn them upside down, and then make a decision based on what I see. 

“You and I, Steve, we’re pretty similar people. We have the same core beliefs. We believe in helping people, doing good, being loyal to our friends, and always trying to do what’s right. The difference, the problem, is that we don’t always agree on what’s right. That’s fine, for the little things. You think people should be honest and I think little lies can be necessary. You think we should always tip 15% and I think it depends on the service. Little things.

“The little things are fine. But Steve, we disagree on some of the big things, and that’s when all the big shit happens. Like ripping the team in half. That kind of big, shitty thing. I don’t think you’d argue with that.”

“No,” Steve said. “I wouldn’t argue with that.”

“Good,” Tony said. “But you’re wrong.”

“Tony,” Steve said, impatient, before he made an exasperated sound as Tony continued. 

“Hear me out, Steve. We don’t disagree on the big things at all. You think right is right and we can take it to the bank. I think right is a decision that I’ve made, and I like being right, I’m almost always right, but I also think what’s right can change. As it turns out, we’re both wrong.

“There is a right answer, Steve, but it’s not always the right answer. Let’s take a real-world recent example. You knew Barnes killed my parents. That brought up the question of whether or not to tell me.”

“God, Tony, I’ve already told you I was wrong. I know I was wrong,” Steve said, closing his eyes.

“Don’t jump ahead,” Tony said. His voice was somewhat chastising, but still academic. “I’m not mad anymore. That isn’t the point here. The point here is that you were asked a question: to tell or not to tell. Shades of grey or black and white. You chose not to tell me, which was probably shades of grey, but the shade that felt the most right to you. Correct?”

“Tony--”

“Correct?” Tony repeated.

Steve sighed. “Yes.”

“Okay. As it so happens, that decision bit you in the ass. It became very clearly the wrong decision. Black and white, it was wrong. Still correct?”

“Yes,” Steve answered.

“Wrong. Just because the thing happened, it didn’t make the original decision wrong. It changed the question. The question was more complicated than it appeared, and it was really something different, all along. The question was, ‘If Tony will never find out on his own, should I give him this information?’ The obvious answer is no, because it would only hurt. That stayed right. There was a right answer there, and I agree with it. If there was no chance I’d ever have found out, I’d have been better off if you’d decided not to tell me. 

“The right answer didn’t change. The question did. Rather, there was another question in play, from the beginning, but they both got pulled into ‘tell or don’t tell.’ The other question was, ‘If Tony might find out.’ The right answer to those that question is yes, you should have told me. You weren’t wrong not to tell me under the question you asked yourself. Your answer became wrong when the question changed. Neither of those answers were really a shade of grey. They were shades of different questions.” Tony cleared his throat. “Following my logic?”

Steve debated answering no, but said, “Yes.”

“Good. What I’m saying is that the answer doesn’t fall into a shade of grey. There’s a right answer. It’s the question that falls into the grey area. We both agree on how you should have answered the question on whether or not to tell me, depending on its variations. Where we disagreed was in what question to ask.

“So let’s look at the big, looming answer. The answer whose basic question is whether or not the SHRA is good.”

“Can we not?” Steve asked. 

“No,” Tony answered. “I’m proving a point. Your answer was no, and mine was yes. What I’m saying is, we don’t actually disagree. There were too many questions, too many answers, for us to really consider. The question you asked yourself was, ‘Is the SHRA good if it causes people to come forward with their identities, put themselves in the control of the government, and lose their freedom?’ or something close to that. Correct?”

Steve considered. “Mostly.”

“Fair enough,” Tony said. “That question has an obvious answer: no, the SHRA is not good. I question I asked also has an obvious answer. Simplified, I asked myself, ‘Is the SHRA good if it keeps the Avengers from becoming a world police, answerable to no one, blamed by everyone, and constantly in danger?’ That question also has an obvious answer: yes, the SHRA is good. If you ask yourself that question, pretend that question is the one that worries you the most, do you agree?”

Steve reached for his coffee and took a sip before remembering it was cold, grimacing, and putting it back down. Tony’s mind was a complicated, foreign, and incomprehensible space most of the time, filled as it was with science, engineering, and a belief system built on a silver spoon and loneliness. Steve couldn’t follow all of Tony’s reasoning; definitely didn’t agree with all of it. At the same time, he could see what Tony was trying to say. He couldn’t understand how he and Tony could agree, when Tony’s focus was so far from his own, but he could see the answer to this question. Steve said, “Yes.”

“Okay,” Tony said. “That’s my point, Steve. We don’t disagree. We see different subtleties when asked the same question, but we don’t disagree. You know what our problem is?”

“No,” Steve answered, setting the obvious “we have different priorities” aside, since he knew it wasn’t what Tony was looking for.

“We don’t communicate,” Tony said. “You think one thing and act on it, because that’s what your experience tells you to do. The same with me. We have such vastly different experience with the world that we can agree on everything, but never know it. Neither of us like to back down, and neither of us like to listen. That’s our problem. We don’t communicate.”

“I don’t know if I agree,” Steve said, shaking his head as though Tony could see him. “I tried to make you see what was wrong.”

“I didn’t listen,” Tony answered. “I was stuck on the parts that I thought were right. The thing is, Steve, the thing is that you didn’t listen, either. We were both so set in our questions that we couldn’t see anything else. I tried to make you understand my point of view, but you didn’t listen. We couldn’t communicate what we meant.”

“Tony, I don’t think that means that we agree. I think that means that the ways we think are so far apart that we couldn’t agree at all,” Steve said.

“Maybe,” Tony said. “Or maybe we just need to get to know one another better. Maybe if we can know each other better, we’ll see that the differences aren’t quite as gaping as we think they are.”

“I still don’t think that I agree,” Steve said. He sighed into the receiver. “And right now, I don’t think that it matters.”

There was a silence at the other end of the line before Tony said, “You’re wrong.” His voice was softer, now. Steve almost thought it might be sad, but he had no way to know, and he was probably just projecting.

“Maybe,” Steve answered.

“It always matters,” Tony said. 

Steve let himself imagine that was Tony had meant was “You always matter.” He said, “Maybe it can matter soon.”

“Whenever you want, Steve.” Tony’s voice was soft, almost a whisper.

There was a pause, and before Steve could answer, before he could put together the change in Tony’s voice, the line went dead. Steve looked at the phone for a moment, then slid it back into his pocket. The sun had risen while they’d been talking, and he would never complete his sketch. Steve gathered his drawing materials into his bag, picked up his empty mug, and walked toward the bar where dirty dishes were received.

He set down his mug before he turned in the direction of his apartment. Steve started making his grocery list in his head, letting himself focus on that, rather than consider Tony’s question. For that, there really only was one correct answer.


End file.
